The invention relates to fluid circulation circuits, particularly cooling and/or heating circuits used in motor vehicles.
It relates in particular to a multi-way quick action coupling device, particularly for forming cooling circuits of motor vehicle engines, namely a circuit comprising essentially a radiator in which is cooled a liquid flowing around the cylinders of the engine, and a degassing tank serving also as expansion tank, vented or not depending on the type of construction. With such a circuit may be further associated an auxiliary radiator for heating the air for conditioning the living space of the vehicle, with a thermostatic valve and/or thermostat inserted in the liquid circuit between the engine and the main radiator for accelerating the temperature rise of the engine.
The different elements of the circuit are generally coupled together by pipes, such as hoses, fixed on their respective connectors by collars, the positioning of which is manual and consequently relatively long, whereas the general tendency in the motor vehicle industry is to reduce as much as possible the labour costs and, for this, to generalize as much as possible the use of controlled or independent robots.
In order to reduce the number of couplings and the length thereof, motor vehicle constructors and equipment suppliers have designed engine casings in which the cooling fluid inlet and outlet orifices are close together or several orifices close together in the case of a more complex circuit, as well as radiators whose inlet and outlet orifices, and possibly connection orifice to the degassing tank, are also grouped together so as to be situated close together and oriented so that their axes are parallel. A radiator has in particular been proposed whose "cold" and "hot" ends of the cooling fluid circuit open into a common water box, having a separating wall and having by construction two rigid adjacent connectors with parallel axes, whose free ends are fast with a common flange overmolded on a part of their surface. This radiator is connected to the engine by hoses joined together by flanges and, although fitting is simpler than that using collars, it nevertheless requires a seal inserted between two flanges and the positioning of nuts and bolts; tightening of the latter may cause leaks in a defective position of the seal and again requires manual action which is difficult to robotize.
The problem is then raised of providing a quick action coupling system between the elements forming the circuit, which does not have the drawbacks of known systems and which, furthermore, is adapted to be positioned in a manufacturing chain using one or more assembly robots.